LEES: GOP pounds the table'

By
Tom Lees, The Times Herald

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Paul Krugman, in his blog “The Conscience of a Liberal” on Dec. 29, quotes the old lawyer’s line: “If the facts are on your side, pound the facts; if the law is on your side, pound the law; if neither are on your side, pound the table.”

I think this old quote might be applied to the GOP strategy for 2014. Since almost none of the GOP’s positions (do they have positions?) on anything make much sense, they are going to have to make a lot of noise to convince the American public to continue the GOP majority in the House and give them a majority in the Senate. This is going to be a hard sell, because giving the GOP more power in Washington, D.C., will hurt the American public financially (except for the super-rich).

I once had a teaching colleague who said that no matter how good prospects look for the Republicans, they would always find a way to mess things up and “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.” I think that the way they will mess up in 2014 will have at least three components.

The first two have to do with Benghazi, both the place and the word. As you know, for quite a while now, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has been leading the GOP charge in which the word “Benghazi” is mentioned in every sentence he speaks. This is somewhat similar to Rudy Giulliani’s failed bid for the 2008 GOP Presidential nomination in which he, as Joe Biden pointed out, put “9/11” into almost every sentence he uttered.

Now, I hate to burst the GOP’s balloon, but anyone who is interested in a detailed report on what happened on 9/11/2012 at the U.S. diplomatic mission and the CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya, can read David D. Kirkpatrick’s excellent report “Deadly Mix in Benghazi: False Allies, Crude Video” in the Dec. 29 New York Times. If you do, you will find out that what Susan Rice (now President Obama’s national security adviser) said on national television a few days after the incident, which left four Americans dead, was not incorrect, but it did not go far enough in its analysis of the situation

The GOP theory (that it was a carefully planned Al Qaeda attack to coincide with the 9/11 date and the Obama administration has tried to cover it up) is not correct, although there were some Islamists involved. The whole thing is too complicated to go into in more detail here, but my bottom line is that if Issa and company want to keep rambling on about Benghazi, they will be making a strategic mistake that will hurt them this fall.

Krugman speaks of the Benghazification of the Affordable Care Act. The higher-ups in the national GOP have decided to throw their hopes for winning in 2014 on the demonizing of “Obamacare.” Now, this might be a sensible strategy if the negative public perception fueled by the botched roll out of the healthcare.gov website continues into the fall. However, as more people become aware of what Josh Marshall over at talkingpointsmemo.com is reporting (there is a good chance that as many as 10 million more people have health insurance coverage now because of the Affordable Care Acts provisions), the public perception very well could change by November. People will realize that this is a good thing for the USA, and it will have us join the ranks of every other industrialized country in the world.

By the way, 5 million more people would have health care insurance today, if a number of Republican governors had not refused to expand Medicaid coverage in their states.

So let the GOP pound the table yelling “Benghazi” and “Obamacare” because I think that is a losing strategy.

The third mistake the GOP might make is to make themselves the focus of public anger again. They did this in the fall with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) inspired shut down of the federal government. Luckily for them, the botched rollout of the ACA came along and shifted public anger back to the Democrats, so much so that the generic GOP candidate beats the generic Democratic candidate in the latest polls.

Now here is where the table pounders make the third mistake in their troika. They “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,” by refusing to increase the federal debt ceiling unless some sort of outrageous demands (that will, of course, hurt everyone except the super-rich) are met. This will shift anger back onto the GOP, especially as more people become aware that the Benghazi incident, as awful as it was, involves no Democratic conspiracy, and that the ACA is helping millions and millions of Americans.

That is my dream scenario on how the Democrats regain control of the House, retain control of the Senate, while already controlling the White House.

Contact Tom Lees, a longtime area resident and educator, at tlees2@aol.com.